I have a CMR which I bought second hand from Audiogon. I fitted a Graham Phantom II arm and Koetsu Urushi Wajima cartridge. The sound is amazing. Is it better than this or that? Who cares!!! I'm listening to music. The CMR looks amazing, is quiet as a mouse and speed stability is as good as I've heard. I fitted the ceramic magnetic bearing and bought a clamp and outer ring from TT weights. I probably will never upgrade this combo except to add different arm tubes and other cartridges.
Clearaudio Master Reference vs. Basis Debut V ??
Need purchase advice on which of these two to go with. Am intrigued, yet concerned with the tangential arms on the Clearaudio- the TQ-1 2000 arm is $3k ; the Master TQ-1 arm is newer, bigger and stupid expensive @ $6k. Is this new arm magic or nonsense ? Would use Graham 2.2 on Basis, which would, btw, be the vacuum model. The Graham arm seems to be almost universally praised, while getting a consensus opinion on the Souther tangential arms is far more difficult. Any 1st hand advice would be greatly appreciated.